Goals Of Week 11:Draw the map and design e-maps, research QR code technology

Research Question: What types of transmedia technologies maximize user engagement with the story?

This week, we began creating maps and electronic maps. Maps are essential in establishing the story world and providing the audience with immersion and interactive experiences. In the previous week, we chose cross-media platforms, and this week, we will select the appropriate cross-media technologies for our story.

According to Rutledge (2018), the optimal state of engagement is called “flow.” In a state of flow, the activity challenges are matched to the user’s skills, allowing them to maintain full focus and interaction within their ability range. Flow is defined as an activity with clear goals and feedback, where the challenges and the user’s skills are balanced to sustain the flow state. Maximizing user engagement involves continuously combining and balancing challenges and user skills. The theory of flow is often applied in emphasizing games, user experience and other creative activities.

Therefore, we have designed the map as a game-like interactive activity, incorporating treasure hunt challenges that match the users’ skills, to continuously engage them. Within the map, we have integrated audio stories at each location point, allowing the audience to follow audio clues to find the treasures. We believe that adding sound to the experience will make it more immersive and enriching for the audience compared to relying solely on text. In addition, we plan to incorporate QR code technology into the map. QR code technology gained significant popularity during the COVID-19 period, providing users with a faster and simpler way to access information. Nowadays, audience attention spans are often limited to just a few seconds, and QR code technology can help us maintain their engagement. (Potharaju 2023) We will integrate the map with QR codes, allowing users to access our website, Twitter, and electronic map by scanning them. This measure aims to ensure the integration of our story with real-life experiences and further enhance user engagement and immersion.

Next week, we will continue working on the map production and strive to explore more ways to integrate the story with the real world.

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